The present invention relates to a method of splicing narrow strips.
Here and hereinafter, the term "narrow strip" is intended to mean a strip of film material of one or a few millimeters in width.
The present invention may be used to advantage, though in no way exclusively, on machines employing narrow strips fed off a reel, for splicing two strips and switching automatically or semiautomatically from a runout reel to a new reel.
In the following description, specific reference is made, purely by way of example, to the above application.
On machines employing reels of normal strip material, changeover from the runout reel to a new reel is normally effected automatically by means of a reel change device which provides for fly-splicing the trailing end of the strip on the runout reel to the leading end of the strip on the new reel. The two strips are normally spliced using an adhesive connecting element which is applied to the two adjacent aligned surfaces of the runout strip and new strip respectively.
Though valid for applications involving relatively wide strips, the above method is unreliable for splicing narrow strips such as the "tear-off" strips of packets in general, and packets of cigarettes in particular, in which case the splices made as described above are invariably weak and tend to fail even under the pull exerted on the strips as they are reeled off.